Category Archives: Wedding

It seems that my blog is having a birthday. Into the Quiet has officially hit the terrible twos! It’s somewhat hard to believe I’ve been writing posts here for two years (with a few months break here and there). My how time doth fly. The blog has even had a name change in this time. Those of you who’ve been visiting me here for the duration will recall the blog used to be called Cliterary Fiction in deference to my work at the time on my (perpetually in progress) book Does My Vagina Look Fat in This? To think that I’ve also written a whole other book in this time doesn’t seem real to me. Not that the Vagina book is finished. Ha! No. I did actually write the entire manuscript and have since trashed the whole thing to start anew, but that’s another story, for another post.

So for old time’s sake I thought we could revisit a few posts from this blog’s wee beginnings. This first post is a poem I wrote in a 3rd year university class (it’s very very old, in other words…) and is still what I consider to be the best poem I’ve ever written – which doesn’t say much about how my poetry has progressed, but then, I suppose I’ve never made any claims of being a poet.

This second post will never not be funny to me. Never. Every word is true. It concerns my hair and my wedding preparations. I defy you to read it and not laugh…

Cocktails at sunset, exotic plants, curious animals, beautiful beaches, riotous rainforest, giggles with my husband… how on earth is a girl meant to come back down to earth after all that?!

The honeymoon was totally amazing. Borneo is quite the place to visit and certainly somewhere we want to go back to some day. Going to the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehab Centre in West Malaysian Borneo was a true highlight, as was the private island resort, Pangkor Laut, we ended our holiday with, wow!

It feels odd to be home without all that pre-wedding stress and chaos that we had going there for that last hectic month. And then to disappear for a month and totally forget about our lives back at home and just enjoy each other and our surroundings… well I do feel a bit disjointed now. The good news is I’m finally going to get back to finishing the book. Will post a deadline date soon and you can all hound me about it as much as you like! [Gulp]

Check out all the wedding and honeymoon photos on Flickr if you so desire!

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Just a quickie to let you all know (and appease my Mother) that our wedding on Saturday really was my dream wedding. I’m still on a high. Bill, CJ’s best man read out your well wishes for us and everyone was so touched, thank you so much my dear friend. I’ll do a proper post about it when I get back from the honeymoon in Borneo (in 3 weeks), so come back then!

In the mean time, here are some photos for you…

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I’ve been a personal trainer on and off (mostly on) for a long time now, and in all that time I’ve trained my fair share of brides. There’s no PT client quite like a bride: She’s simultaneously tired and overstimulated and obsessive and flaky, and will basically do anything you tell her to do, anything. She’s the perfect client in other words.

And now it’s my turn. Being the trainer and the bride to be at the same time is quite the experience! The amount of completely crazy conversations I’ve had in my head recently as I will myself to go just one more kilometre on the bike are reasonably numerous. If nothing else, it’s proved to me that I still have a steel will when it comes to short term goals. The last 6 weeks of training in the gym have been somewhat reminiscent of preparing for the body building comp 4 years ago. I’m certainly not doing anywhere near the same amount of training as I was then, and my food intake is considerably more pleasant than it was back then as well, but the level of willpower feels pretty much the same.

Why am I doing this I wonder, as the sweat drips off my elbows and splatters onto the base of the treadmill like rain. Why does an already fit, size 6 feminist need to live up to the whole beautiful bride expectation?

I don’t know!! I just feel compelled, like it’s fixed into my hard-wiring somehow. My abs are sticking out now, and when that happens I just get more compelled. Maybe it’s an illness? Well quite frankly, with two weeks to my wedding, I don’t care!

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I thought the whole boob thing was difficult! The HAIR thing is the next challenge! I had a disastrous hair trial down south on the weekend. I looked positively revolting.

And that’s just what you want on your wedding day.

How can I sum up the hair trial experience for you? Firstly, let me explain that I am about to downplay the sequence of events that was the trial, ok? Here goes:

I get to the hairdresser’s house with my mum and she informs us that because her kids were home with her, we would need to do the trial in the shed, otherwise they’d annoy us too much.

In the shed.

Her husband is home to mind the children for her, but is evidently incapable of movement.

It’s raining outside and the shed is freezing.

The shed is full of, you know, shed stuff, so I perch on a folding chair in front of a mirror propped up on an esky, surrounded by tins of paint, toys and tools.

Did I mention that the shed is freezing? I don’t offer to take off my scarf and leather jacket and the hairdresser (TH) doesn’t ask me to, so she does my wedding hair trial around the scarf.

I show TH pictures of hairstyles that I like and she proceeds to tell me what’s wrong with them and why they won’t work.

The children escape the very watchful and concerned eye of the quiescent and charming husband and proceed to throw their tiny bodies at the shed door and droan “mum mum mum mum mum” in a ceaseless monotone.

TH tells the monotone monsters to go back to their father.

The monotone monsters ignore TH and continue their vigil.

TH shows me and my mum hundreds of her own surfy-chic wedding photos and proceeds to tell me how fabulous her hair was and why I should look like that.

Mum mum mum mum mum mum…

TH continues with her quest to make me look like her.

Mum mum mum mum mum mum…

TH empties 327 cans of hairspray onto my golden locks until she is satisfied that my hair is now a flattering dull poo-brown colour.

We are still of course, in the shed.

TH pulls my hair across my forehead so tight one of my eyeballs pops out and rolls across the paint-flecked shed floor.

Mum mum mum mum mum mum…

I pick up my eyeball and shove it back in before TH notices and now half of what I look at has flecks of ‘Barely Beige’ satin finish floating in front of it.

TH finishes with a flourish and shows me the back of my head in a mirror. I look like Mrs Cunningham from Happy Days. TH grins triumphantly as the monotone monsters manage to hurtle their bodies against the shed door so hard they crash through it. They stop dead when they see me, staring at my head, transfixed. Clearly they’ve never seen such beauty.

I look at myself in the mirror over the esky and wonder if I’ve ever looked quite so unattractive. I close my eyes and imagine my wedding photos.

I pay my money. I walk back through the warm house with TH, the monotone monsters who have suddenly found their voices, and a Jack Russel in tow, as the couch-bound husband looks slightly miffed about all the noise.

TH hands me her business card, which, when looking at it, one would assume she’s a surfboard salesman, not a bridal hairdresser, and I quietly get in my car and drive away as fast as I can.

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This getting married thing is filled with some interesting challenges. The latest we’ve had to face is how to tell people to leave their rug rats at home. We both adore children, but at a small wedding, we both think it’s best if only our nieces and nephews are in attendance, but telling other parents to leave their spawn behind must be done with a certain amount of panache. (It’s lucky I have panache. I bought some years ago at a flea market because I always knew the day would come when I would truly need it. )

My own personal challenge has been achieving that busty look I want for my wedding dress. It’s proving more difficult than I ever dreamed it would be. I mean, seriously, one should not have to work this hard for a little cleavage. Sigh. And it’s not even cleavage that I’m after, just a wee swell would be fine. At the first dress fitting the dressmaker told me to go away and buy lingerie that would “enhance” my bust. Enhance? Enhance what? I took her advice and bought not one, but TWO lots of padding for each modest boobie and humbly presented my wares to her on Saturday for the second fitting. As she was rummaging around trying to manhandle two lots of padding, a bra two sizes too big, a dress with a serious amount of pins sticking out of it, and my modest boobies, I had to stop and admire her tenacity. This woman is almost as determined as I am that I’m going to have boobs on my wedding day. Thank goodness.

The next idea is to sew one lot of padding to the dress itself, take in the actual bra, affix the second lot of padding to my modest bosom with superglue and then stitch the whole contraption to the dress. Not bad eh? CJ might have a bit of a time on the wedding night, but as long as I remember to take some glue remover with me, I’m sure he’ll work it out.

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CJ and I haven’t been apart since we got engaged and it feels strange not being with him. Much like having a leg amputated. Do you think that’s a tad dramatic? Possibly. I am an Aries mind you, and not without a decent amount of drama-queeness coursing through my veins. Still, I have this strange sense of having forgotten something so important that soon I might just whither away without it. I’m in Canberra for three days to see my gorgeous new nephew and CJ is at home working, designing wedding invitations, and pining. (Ok, I made up the pining bit, he’s probably just enjoying the quiet.) Anyway, missing him made me think of a love letter I wrote him a long time ago. A real, true, Hollywood sort of love letter I gave him to take on the plane when he went to the States for work for 3 weeks just after we got together. It fills me with such happiness thinking back to that time…

Guardian of my heart, Beautiful Heart, thank you for this precious gift of love that you have given me. I wanted to give you a gift to take away with you and all I could think of was words, words. Every time I see you and then I am here alone, these words of love and gratitude tumble through my head like falling leaves and lay, untidy and transient, waiting for me to scoop them up and place them lovingly together on the page before they float away, replaced by new ones. But when I try to gather them up, they slip through my fingers like rain, like silk… like magic. I can’t seem to fit the right words next to one another to paint the picture of my love for you.

I collected an armful of my leaves of love today and here’s how they fell:

The Love Letter to HimCome into my heart, she said, and lie down. Lay your head on my imagination, your arms across my intellect, and your belly against my feelings. I won’t disturb you as you slumber in my thoughts and doze against my dreams.Come into my body, she said, and lie down. Lay your weariness on my breast, your intrigue against my neck, your laughter in my belly and your desire in my heart.Come into my mouth, she said, and lie down. I will fill you up with words of love. And so she spoke:

The rest may just well end up being our wedding vows, so you’ll just have to wait!

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I'm a writer from Melbourne. I have a background in theatre and write reviews for Australian Stage Online. I'm a Mum to baby Charlie and work in philanthropic fundraising. I've got a bad novel under the bed and a good one soon to hit the shelves in early 2015. I'm a feminist and a cat lover and I'll never be ashamed of either.